Following is a quote from the Theatrical Release of Fellowship of the Ring transcribed by Finrod on this thread. I cite it because it shows that the Film has specifically referenced the time that had passed since the rings finding. Add to this the the Finding of the ring sequence (An apparently younger Bilbo in Gollum's cave) from the prologue of the same film and you have what I see as Peter Jackson's on-screen precedent for GDT's Hobbit movies.

"GANDALF: This is the One Ring. Forged by the Dark Lord Sauron in the &#64257;res of Mount Doom. Taken by Isildur from the hand of Sauron himself.

FRODO: Bilbo found it. In Gollum’s cave.

GANDALF: Yes. For sixty years, the Ring lay quiet, in Bilbo’s keeping, prolonging his life, delaying old age. But no longer, Frodo. Evil is stirring in Mordor. The Ring has awoken. It’s heard its master’s call."Kangi Ska

I believe that, for the most part, those were the case. We know that Numenoreans, Elves, and Dwarves age slower than humans; we don't know that about Hobbits. That's why there shouldn't have been an 87 year old actor playing Aragorn, or a 140 year old playing Gimli. The only one of your examples that might not have been the case is Bilbo (though old Bilbo is pretty damn old; perhaps close to 131), but he does have the Ring, which might have had some effect.

I'm inclined to include Bilbo among the anomalies. He is wise, but not one of the Wise, he is a hero, but not one of the Heroes. His good-naturedness, kindness, resourcefulness, luck and destiny kept him unscathed and, in a certain way, master of his surrounding world almost wherever he was. Yes, I'm going for a Bombadil similarity. I believe Bilbo, like Bombadil, is a singular entity. An agregator of (softened, in Bilbo's case) traits found in several well-defined categories of beings. Anyway, Bilbo is such a character I woudn't doubt by now he's even become something like a Maia Honoris Causa and spends his days pestering poor Mandos to contribute with some lines to his new poetic adaptation of The Doom.

He is a member of the Upper Class...but not the ruling class. He is wealthy, has no need to hold a job or do labor other than brew tea and bake cakes...he even employs labor to attend the garden of his estate. Kangi Ska

Well, I wasn’t picking on you, specifically, if that’s what you mean. I just noticed that once you brought up numbers, everyone went into all these tortured calculations. I had been thinking in simpler, different terms. I was looking at Bilbo’s age in the context of what Tolkien would have expected his initial readership to think, decades before he wrote LOTR and published details of Hobbit aging. I also questioned whether he had even come up with the idea of hobbits aging differently from Men yet when he wrote The Hobbit. That’s all. ~~~~~~~~

...as a veil in carefully crafted beard fashion (whenever they're travelling.) That's what I would choose to substantiate Aragorn's explanation to Eowin ("it's the beards.")

I have a deep affection for dwarves and my wish is for the somewhat rare dwarf ladies to be beautiful (in their way) with faces we could clearly descry and exceptionally wary of strangers. There are arguments against it, but even Cirdan was supposed to have a beard.

Hindsight is 20-20. I was thinking along the lines you were but also was looking at what PJ had put in the film at that time. The whole discussion of Hobbit life spans and mortality rates... kept pulling me away from what I wanted to know, which was: is there film evidence that might speak to how Bilbo might be cast. When I saw something that I thought might be important it got lost in the whirl.

The Bagginses are well-off, respectable members of the Shire gentry. They are related through marriage to the Tooks and Brandybucks, the leading families of the Shire.

The Tooks and Brandybucks are the wealthiest, most powerful families in the Shire and the closest thing it has to nobility. Their heads even have semi-formal titles (the Thain and the Master of Buckland).

The Chubbs, Bolgers and Bracegirdles intermarried with the Bagginses, Tooks and Brandybucks and are presumably of a similar social class.

The Gamgees are working-class laborers, servants, and craftsmen.

The Cottons are farmers and landowners.

The Maggots are larger farmers/landowners, perhaps even minor gentry.

How this plays out:

- Bilbo has inherited a good deal of wealth from his parents and is closely related to the Shire's leading families. He doesn't need to work and can spend his time amusing himself. Same goes for Frodo.

- Merry and Pippin don't need to work, either, since they're the male heirs to the two most influential monied families in the Shire. They can while away their days listening to Uncle Bilbo's stories and getting into mischief.

- On the other hand, Sam has worked since he was a child. His father warns him not to have ideas above his station. He's "marrying up" when he weds Rose Cotton, since she's the daughter of a landowner.

As for the movie casting, what this means is that Bilbo's led an easy and comfortable life. He should look like a well-fed, healthy Hobbit of 50, or human-equivalent age of late 30s-early 40s. With caffeine, all things are possible.

to have a gardener, or to have an income that didn't require you to work. In fact that was the normal way that the middle class lived in the 18th and 19th centuries. Read Jane Austen or George Eliot. To be "respectable", unless you were a member of the church or an officer in the army, you were expected to live off your income.

People who actually had to work for a living, tradesmen and such, were a class apart, and not really "respectable".

But to be a member of the upper class was something else again. Bilbo (like Jane Austen's heroines) has connections to the upper class, but he's not a part of it, at least not by the way I'd define the distinction.

I don't see a distinction, by the way, as you do: "the Upper Class...but not the ruling class". The upper class was by definition the ruling class - they had estates containing farms and villages of which they were the landlord, and which they ruled in a local way. And they had power and influence both at court and in Parliament (since they could more or less appoint the local representative to the House of Commons, and they or a family member would also have a seat in the House of Lords).In LotR, I'd say Merry and Pippin are upper-class, although young and not yet in any positions of power. They belong to great families, who live on huge estates with their own villages and farm tenants (like Farmer Maggot, who is so polite to young Mr. Pippin and Mr. Merry, even though he beat the trespassing Frodo when he was young). Bilbo is not a member of their class, especially in The Hobbit where his family connections have not yet been established - although of course he is still highly "respectable", until he blows it by hooking up with that disreputable wizard and his dwarf friends! They went in, and Sam shut the door. But even as he did so, he heard suddenly, deep and unstilled, the sigh and murmur of the Sea upon the shores of Middle-earth. From the unpublished Epilogue to the Lord of the Rings

It appears that we have a Taxinomic conflict on the definition of terms.
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It might be good to preface any statement with something like "By today's standards" or some such qualifier. Applying english standards may be object to as we are looking at an imaginary place. Kangi Ska

And anyway, I don't suppose the movie will care about any of this. They certainly didn't with LotR. They went for a very flattened, modern take on country life in which class really played no part. I liked the updated contrast between what we tend to call "privileged" and "underprivileged" in Frodo and Sam, rather than the complexities of class distinctions.

And you're right to remind me that we're talking about an "imaginary place" here - it's almost a caricature, or at least a child's-eye view, of the English class system that we get, especially in The Hobbit.

One thing that is an important element of Bilbo's character in the book, though, is the very middle-class concern for "respectability". But I'm not sure that means much nowadays, so maybe we'll see some updating there as well. They went in, and Sam shut the door. But even as he did so, he heard suddenly, deep and unstilled, the sigh and murmur of the Sea upon the shores of Middle-earth. From the unpublished Epilogue to the Lord of the Rings

I had already seen that part of Finrod's post I simply hadn't heard of Dís (that I could remember at least) and therefore I was confused. I didn't know whether Finrod was just being funny, or if Dís actually was a character created by Tolkien, so I searched the Encyclopedia of Arda "Dís". I've got it now

then again, maybe I'm misunderstanding what you're trying to say but no matter, back on topic...